Climate Activists Embrace Joy as a Powerful Tool for Change

When several different team-building groups shared space at a retreat center in New York’s Hudson Valley, one bunch of people stood out because of their constant laughter — so much that someone from another group eventually asked, “Who are you guys?”

They were climate activists meeting to figure out how to better fight against worsening climate change, a cause usually associated with failure, sacrifice and doom.

Across the world, groups of activists, teachers and psychologists are tackling one of the planet’s most daunting problems with laughter, dancing, hugs and most especially joy. With a heavy emphasis on what works psychologically, seminars, books and college classes are trying to change how people approach climate change, by talking more about community and happiness than sacrifice. Earth Day, founded in 1970, has become a day of both protest and celebration, its founders say.

“I believe that joy is all the more necessary and maybe all the more holy in difficult times,” said Katharine Wilkinson, an activist who led the Hudson Valley seminar that got the other groups’ notice. “Joy is like, how do we take part in the shimmy and the shimmer even as the world lurches?”

People like Wilkinson want to harness happiness to power those fighting to curb the burning of coal, oil and gas and the heat-trapping gases they emit, causing Earth to warm. In a recent speech at American University, Wilkinson called power and joy “a really potent portal to the gifts that we want to offer in this time of immense trouble and yet also immense possibility.”

Some psychologists call such thinking healthy and helpful.

“Joy is what made our species survive in the first place,” said Jiaying Zhao, a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia. “If we’re rewarded, reinforced by it, then we continue doing it. We spill over. We become contagious. We get others on board.”

Often that’s with a laugh.

“Laughter is really one of the best strategies for coping with stress,” said Julia Kim-Cohen, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “So there are physiological benefits to laughter. The science shows that it reduces blood pressure and relaxes people’s nervous systems. And so when we’re relaxed through laughter, I think that helps us feel our hearts open to one another. Sharing laughter I think is this ancient, evolutionarily wired thing that humans do to connect.”

First, face some hard realities

But reality is still key, said Christiana Figueres.

Figueres was the United Nations climate chief in 2015 when she helped shepherd the groundbreaking Paris climate deal that sought to limit Earth’s warming. At that summit, Figueres said she felt she succeeded because she listened to everyone “deeply with an open heart and an open mind to what people are saying and especially what they’re not saying” to find some common ground. And at night she and her staff danced to feel joy.

Figueres later founded Global Optimism, an activist group that put its mindset in its name, and she also runs seminars across the globe that involve joy, dancing and reality.

“We cannot turn our back to the suffering and the grief and the eco-anxiety and all that family of emotions because they are very there,” Figueres said. “Not to deny reality, not to deny the challenges that we have — that’s step No. 1.

Figueres said the trick is “to anchor ourselves precisely in the pain and the suffering, embrace the pain, and the suffer” and then turn it into something good. She likened it to converting nasty kitchen waste into compost and fertilizer for a beautiful garden.

In this case it’s accepting these emotions and converting them to “a sense of agency” so people can try to the change the world, she said.

Wilkinson, who runs seminars called Climate Wayfinding and a has an upcoming book of the same name, said she invites the darker emotions into her seminars because “when those come in then we also open space for the pendulum to go to the other side.”

And that’s where laughter, joke-telling, hugging and dancing happen.

Joy is a message that works better than sacrifice

For years, governments and activists have talked about consuming less — such as energy and meat — to save the planet.

“If we have to win the fight against climate change by getting people to give up the things they enjoy, I don’t think we’re going to win the fight,” said University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn.

Emphasizing sacrifice “is counterproductive,” said Zhao, who teamed with Dunn to write the book “Leave the Lights On.”

“Instead of asking people to sacrifice the things that bring them joy, our book is making the exact opposite claim: Do more of the stuff that brings you pleasure but also have a low carbon footprint,” she said.

“We’re actually trying to get people to change their behaviors. And joy is the missing ingredient here,” Zhao said. “All we’re saying is give this a shot.”

Dunn, using biking to work as an example, said, “If we enjoy doing something, it is a lot easier to stick with it.”

From ‘eco-pooper’ to making students happy talking about climate disasters

Even though she teaches psychology, including a class on the psychology of climate change, Kim-Cohen said she used to approach fighting climate change all wrong.

“I was that person at the cocktail party bringing up, you know, have you have you heard about the latest wildfire? Have you seen the flood in Spain?” Kim-Cohen said. “It was such a downer. I was such a pooper. There’s actually a term called ‘eco pooper.’ I was that person. And it didn’t work. People would just shut down.”

After a few years she burned out and got angry, Kim-Cohen said. But then Wilkinson’s seminar changed that: “I came out with my heart filled with love.”

Senior Leah Glaser said she signed up for Kim-Cohen’s class this semester thinking it would be a downer. It isn’t.

“I leave every class feeling empowered to do something,” Glaser said. “I definitely leave with a smile on my face. It just really uplifts me in ways that other classes really don’t.”